Flap’s Links and Comments for March 17th on 12:53

These are my links for March 17th from 12:53 to 15:00:

• Sen. Rand Paul Unveils 5-Year Budget Plan: Eliminates Four Federal Agencies – Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., unveiled today his five-year path to a balanced budget, leaving several federal agencies behind. Among the items on the cutting room floor are the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.

  “There’s a lot of things in here that everybody could agree to, Republicans and Democrats, but nobody’s leading on the president’s side and on our side we felt we needed to put this forward to get the debate started, at the very least,” the freshman Senator explained at a Capitol Hill press conference this afternoon.

  The proposal also calls for the repeal of “Obamacare,” but leaves entitlements untouched.

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  Hard to argue with this plan.

• OH, HILL NO – WWW.THEDAILY.COM – OH, HILL NO – Obama's indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edge
• OH, HILL NO – Obama’s indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edge – Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits.

  At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Clinton announced that she’s done with Obama after 2012 — even if he wins again.

  “Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”

  He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretaries of State — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”

  Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

  In the past week, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s former top adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter lashed out at Obama for the same reason.

  The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week.

  When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.

  “Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”

  Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

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  If the GOP can just nominate a decent candidate, they will have Obama for lunch in 2012.

  A big if though.

• President 2012 Video: Is Mitch Daniels Being Unfairly Attacked from the Right? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Video: Is Mitch Daniels Being Unfairly Attacked from the Right? #tcot #catcot
• T-Paw v. Hee-Haw | The Weekly Standard – President 2012: T-Paw v. Hee-Haw
• Glenn Reynolds Interviews Mickey Kaus | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Glenn Reynolds Interviews Mickey Kaus #tcot #catcot
• President 2012: T-Paw v. Hee-Haw – The skirmish between Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty on defense spending and Afghanistan is more enlightening for what it says about GOP 2012 politics than for what it says about the substance of foreign and defense policy.

  Barbour's comments, at a GOP dinner in Iowa, were … comments—and certainly didn't constitute any kind of serious presentation of a foreign policy agenda. His case for cutting defense spending was more political than substantive—"We can save money on defense and if we Republicans don't propose saving money on defense, we'll have no credibility on anything else,"—and not very smart politics, either. What's more, according to Kasie Hunt's report, "After the speech, Barbour told reporters that he couldn't identify specific programs that should be cut from the Pentagon budget." Barbour's only substantive argument seemed to be this: "Anybody who says you can't save money at the Pentagon has never been to the Pentagon." This is a) childish, b) slightly offensive, and c) raises the question of how much time Barbour has spent at the Pentagon—apart from time spent lobbying for defense contractors or foreign governments.

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  Does anyone really consider Haley Barbour besides Haley Barbour a serious candidate for President?